ARPA-Ed

16 Pages·2011·0.55 MB·English

Department of Education
Winning the Education Future
The Role of ARPA-ED

“[I]f we want to win the future – if we want innovation to produce jobs in America and not overseas –
then we also have to win the race to educate our kids.”
- President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, January 25, 2011

At the center of the President's strategy to ―win the future‖ is the intersection of education,
innovation and infrastructure. The growth industries of today and tomorrow require a
workforce with unprecedented knowledge and skills and greatly improved adaptability. By
aggressively pursuing new and better ways to educate and train our citizens, we can meet those
requirements, leapfrog other nations, and reclaim global leadership in education. To achieve
this, the United States must out-innovate the competition – competition that is already
outperforming the United States and has clear national direction.
Closing the gap between the potential of learning science and technology to improve student
performance and its current real-world impact can transform American education. The
information technology (IT) revolution has catalyzed new capabilities and increased
productivity in numerous sectors, yet it has not done the same for education. Technology,
considered a ―force multiplier‖ by the military, has also dramatically increased the impact and
efficiency of doctors, pilots, engineers, and many others, and it should do the same for
educators. Educational technology has the capacity to empower Americans, of all ages and
backgrounds, living in rural America or urban America, to become true lifelong learners,
enabling them to obtain, keep, and create the jobs of the future.
To address the under-investment in learning technology R&D, the President’s FY2012 budget
proposes to invest $90 million to create an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Education
(ARPA-ED). ARPA-ED will fund projects performed by industry, universities, or other
innovative organizations, selected based on their potential to create a dramatic breakthrough in
learning and teaching.

ARPA-ED will aggressively pursue technological breakthroughs that have the potential to
transform teaching and learning the way the Internet, GPS, and robotics (all areas where the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has had a profound impact) have
transformed commerce, travel, warfare and the way we live our daily lives. ARPA-ED will

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complement and build upon innovative work being done across the public and private sectors,
and could catalyze development of:
 Digital tutors as effective as personal tutors. Researchers have long aspired to develop
educational software that is as effective as a personal tutor, one of the ―grand
challenges‖ in the President’s innovation strategy. DARPA and the Navy have
supported the development of a ―digital tutor‖ to train new Navy recruits to become IT
systems administrators. After using the digital tutor for only seven weeks, Navy
recruits are dramatically outperforming their peers who are receiving traditional
classroom-based instruction and have the level of expertise of an IT specialist with three
years of experience. These early results from the DARPA project show the promise of
additional investment in this area.

 Courses that improve the more students use them. Internet companies like Netflix and
Amazon have devoted significant resources to develop tools that analyze consumer data
to identify patterns, tailor results to users’ preferences, and provide a more
individualized experience. Researchers are exploring whether similar techniques can be
applied to education. For example, after developing software to teach fractions,
researchers could study the learning patterns of how tens of thousands of students
mastered different concepts. This ―virtual learning laboratory‖ could draw on this data
when presented with new users—taking what it knows about how students learn to
tailor material based on how similar individuals successfully mastered those same
concepts. The data collected by such software could also provide powerful new insights
for practitioners about ways to guide traditional classroom instruction.

 Educational software as compelling as the best videogame. A well-designed game can
keep players engaged for hours by becoming progressively more difficult without being
impossible, and requiring complex collaborations in multi-player games. The insights
from great game designers can and should be applied to develop rich and compelling
learning environments for students.

The traditional under-investment in catalyzing developments in educational technology creates
a huge opportunity for improving education in this country and underscores the President’s
overall message to win the future through ―out-innovating, out-building, and out-educating‖
the world.
Investment in this area also promises impact beyond the K-12 and university learning
opportunities. A well-educated populace will be prepared to secure the quality jobs of the
future. Education technologies that significantly accelerate the pace of learning will help
address the challenge of retraining displaced workers as their companies and industries evolve.

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American ingenuity, technology leadership, and entrepreneurship can help the United States
lead a field that can be a growing export market.
The President intends to position ARPA-ED to succeed from the start. ARPA-ED has the
opportunity to learn from the expertise of DARPA and the Advanced Research Projects Agency
– Energy (ARPA-E) in order to make rapid progress. ARPA-ED builds on recent major reform
efforts in education and the basic and applied research of other federal agencies such as the
Institute of Education Sciences, the National Science Foundation, and DARPA. And a federal
focus on learning technologies as an area of national priority, described in the President’s
Strategy for American Innovation, will help ensure that demand exists for innovators bold enough
to pursue transformative improvement.

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Background
“Being average in reading and science – and below average in math – is not nearly good enough in a
knowledge economy where scientific and technological literacy is so central to sustaining innovation
and international competitiveness.”
- Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, on the results of the Program for International Student
Assessment December 7, 2010

ARPA-ED will address critical national needs. It will help America regain its standing as the
world leader in education by supporting the development of game changing educational
technologies. It will fill a gap in the existing infrastructure for education research and
development by establishing an organization focused on directed development. It will help
drive economic growth by establishing American leadership in a new global growth sector.
We need to improve learning outcomes
An educated workforce is necessary for our economic competitiveness, so we must
ensure that our students develop the skills and knowledge they need to create the new ideas,
new industries, and new jobs that will drive the country’s economy. America has many of the
best schools in the world, but studies continue to show that the United States needs to make
dramatic improvements in learning outcomes to ensure our future competitiveness:
 On the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress exams, only 30% of 8th
graders and 21% of 12th graders scored proficient or higher in science.1
 In the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment, the U.S. ranked 14th in
reading, 17th in science, and 25th in math.2
 Graduating roughly 75% of our students from high school, America ranks below the
average of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and
behind 16 other OECD countries.3
 Despite having the best colleges in the world, America has relinquished its lead and
fallen to ninth in the proportion of young people with a college degree.

Performance improvement in education has lagged behind other sectors. Between 1970
and 2000, productivity in education declined by nearly half.4 Today, the United States spends

1 National Assessment of Educational Progress, ―Summary of Major Findings,‖ The Nation’s Report Card,
available at http://nationsreportcard.gov/science_2009/summary.asp.
2 Angel Gurría, Remarks at the Presentation of the PISA 2010 Results, Dec. 7, 2010, available at
http://www.oecd.org/document/7/0,3746,en_21571361_44315115_46635719_1_1_1_1,00.html.
3 ―Science and Engineering Indicators: 2010,‖ The National Science Board (2010) at 1-36, available at
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind10/pdf/c01.pdf.

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more than nearly all peer countries for the mediocre performance we achieve on international
assessments such as the Program for International Student Assessment.5
The Administration recognizes, however, that performance on standardized tests is not
and must not be the only way in which we measure the success of our education system.
Developing soft skills and nurturing passion for learning is equally important in preparing
every student for lifelong success and preparing the next generation of creators, builders, and
entrepreneurs. Investments in educational technology can help eliminate the false choice
between educating the most technically proficient citizens and inspiring interest and creativity.

“The future is ours to win. But to get there, we can't just stand still. As Robert Kennedy told us, ‘The
future is not a gift. It is an achievement.’ Sustaining the American Dream has never been about
standing pat. It has required each generation to sacrifice, and struggle, and meet the demands of a
new age.”
- President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, January 25, 2011

We need more education R&D
If a scientist went to sleep in 1950 and woke up today, she would be dazzled by the new
tools in her field. A doctor would be shocked by the novel devices in medicine. Yet, as former
New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has described, teachers still operate in a classroom
full of children, often with only chalk and a chalkboard just as they did 60 years ago.6 Despite
the growing urgency to better position our students to succeed in a knowledge-based global
economy, there is a lack of investment in research and development of the education tools that
could help teachers provide extraordinary education to America’s students as the norm.
Because of limited R&D investment, the benefits of the IT revolution have largely passed
education by. Facebook and Twitter have shown us new ways of connecting, advances in
biotechnology have enabled the National Institutes of Health to fund the sequencing of 1,800
complete genomes, and Amazon and E-bay have changed business models and created
thousands of new businesses along the way. But there is simply not enough spending on
research and development to produce similar breakthroughs in education. R&D accounts for

4 Caroline M. Hoxby, Productivity in Education: The Quintessential Upstream Industry, Southern Economic
Journal, 71(2), 2004, pages 209-231 (measuring productivity as national percentile rank points of average
scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress divided by average per pupil spending).
5 Secretary Arne Duncan, Remarks at OECD’s Release of the Program for International Student
Assessment 2009 Results, ED.gov, Dec. 7, 2010, available at
http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/secretary-arne-duncans-remarks-oecds-release-program-
international-student-assessment-.
6 Joel Klein, former Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, The Aspen Institute’s
Education Innovation Forum. http://www.aspeninstitute.org/video/2011-education-innovation-forum-
innovation-education-inspiration-implementation-transformation.

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only 0.2 percent of total national K-12 expenditures. Knowledge-intensive sectors of the
economy invest 10-20 percent of sales in R&D, and even mature industries devote 2 percent of
sales to R&D. Too little innovation has deprived teachers of the tools and strategies they need
to provide all students the skills they must acquire. Innovations in other fields, however,
promise to make a surge of innovation in education easier, as education entrepreneurs leverage
the IT revolution already underway in other sectors.

We need a mechanism for directed development in education
There are three broad pathways to innovation in education: (1) Basic & Applied Research, (2)
Field Scan/Field Innovation, and (3) Directed Development.
The federal government’s research and development process traditionally focuses on awarding
grants to researchers through a competitive process, based on established priorities, to develop
portfolios of basic and
applied research. For
example, the Institute of
Education Sciences has
research and training
programs that range from
Early Childhood to Policy,
Finance, and Systems. The
projects that emerge from
this pathway are well-
suited for applied research
and for contributing to
knowledge that can
influence policy and
practice. Such basic and
applied research is also a critical foundation for innovation; basic research and development
supported by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, and the private
sector, among others, led to the development and testing of such important innovations in
learning technologies as Logo, Smalltalk, Squeak, and Scratch, as well as the theoretical
cognitive modeling foundations of today’s cognitive tutors.
In a sector as large as education and learning, there are also myriad different efforts and
approaches to improve student learning being tried at any given time. Inevitably, some will
demonstrate significant promise while others will fail to meet existing needs. Field scans of
efforts by practitioners and others throughout education can help identify and support the most
successful, ideally resulting in the spread of effective ideas.

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The Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) and other more narrowly-targeted demonstration grants,
as well as structures such as communities of practice, embody this approach. i3 is especially
noteworthy because of its explicit focus on evidence as a primary criterion for assessing what
should be expanded, an emphasis previously absent in many education grant programs to the
extent of i3, and in federal grant programs with the level of resources of i3.
Even the best existing practice in the sector, however, will not always keep pace with the
significant advances in technology, cognitive research, and other fields. Advances in basic
research may suggest game-changing approaches that could revolutionize both the
effectiveness and productivity of approaches to learning. Further, some projects may
demonstrate such promise that they merit support in a more aggressive and direct manner than
either of the two approaches above allows, so a third approach is needed.
Directed development provides the ability to pursue a small number of high-impact projects,
from concept through demonstration or prototyping. Directed development projects begin with
a specific end goal, rather than the aim to increase broad areas of knowledge, and generally
include a defined time period and path forward. Directed development focuses on advancing
beyond the state-of-the-art such that the activities of the field are unlikely to produce the desired
outcome in the prescribed time frame.
The education sector currently suffers from the lack of directed development. Directed
development is a means to fund transformational or game-changing technology that the private
sector alone cannot or will not support because of high risk, uncertain returns, or extended time
horizons for completion. Federal support for public-private partnerships that are high-risk and
high-return can play an important role in education, as it has in other areas:

 The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) was created in 1958, and has
played a critical role in the development of a broad range of technologies, including the
Internet, GPS, stealth aircraft, and night vision.

 The Advanced Research Project Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) has shown that the DARPA
model can work outside of the defense industry, and has awarded nearly $400 million
since April 2009 to over 100 projects seeking fundamental breakthroughs in energy
technology. ARPA-E also demonstrated the demand for such a funding mechanism in
another field with limited R&D funding, receiving approximately 3,700 concept papers
in response to its first solicitation.7

7 ARPA-E, ―ARPA-E Projects (Current),‖ http://arpa-
e.energy.gov/About/FAQs/ARPAEProjectsCurrent.aspx (click on ―How were these projects selected?‖).

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Transforming Teaching and Learning

“Education is the key to America’s economic growth and prosperity and to our ability to compete in
the global economy. It is the path to good jobs and higher earning power for Americans. It is
necessary for our democracy to work.”
- National Education Technology Plan 2010

The National Education Technology Plan 2010 called for ―revolutionary‖ change through
technology and noted the power of a DARPA-style approach to research.8 In September of
2010, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology explicitly called for the
creation of an ARPA-ED to help technology ―play a
Case Study:
transformative role in education.‖9 Others have
recognized the power of technology in education,
In a recent study, DARPA compared
including Jeb Bush and Bob Wise, who in December
students who trained to be Navy
2010 wrote that educational technology could provide
Information System Technicians, and
education that ―maximizes every child’s potential for
found that those who had been
learning, prepares every child with the knowledge
trained by a new digital tutor
and skills to succeed in college and careers, and
outperformed traditionally-trained
launches every child into the world with the ability to
students by two standard deviations.
pursue his or her dreams.‖10
In other words, the average student

trained by the new digital tutor
Technology has the potential to support improved
outperforms around 98 percent of
learning outcomes, empower and engage students
students trained using traditional
through new approaches to education, and give
instruction.
teachers the tools they need to ensure each student
Source: J. D. Fletcher (2011). DARPA Education
receives a world-class education. The possibilities Dominance Program: April 2010 and November 2010
Digital Tutor Assessments (NS D-4260). Alexandria,
include: VA: Institute for Defense Analyses.

 Providing Highly Personalized Instruction. Affordable, large-scale personalized
instruction has long been an aspiration of the education system. Benjamin Bloom
articulated the ―two sigma problem‖ in 1984, showing that the average student taught

8 U.S. Department of Education, National Education Technology Plan 2010 at ix, 76, available at
http://www.ed.gov/sites/default/files/netp2010.pdf.
9 President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology, Prepare and Inspire: K-12 Education in Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) for America’s Future at ix (2010), available at
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/pcast-stemed-report.pdf
10 Jeb Bush and Bob Wise, Digital Learning Now!, Foundation for Excellence in Education at 2 (2010),
available at http://excelined.org/Docs/Digital%20Learning%20Now%20Report%20FINAL.pdf.

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through one-on-one tutoring outperformed 98 percent of students taught in a traditional
classroom. Computer-based tutors and other methods of personalization that employ a
range of practices and that adapt to student needs demonstrate promise in cost-
effectively providing this highly personalized instruction. Indeed, ARPA-ED can build
on the work by DARPA highlighted in the case study to understand whether such
outcomes are possible in core academic subjects.

 Rethinking Curricula. Curricula and pedagogy tend to be developed and refined based
on the beliefs of experts, and not always on an empirical basis of what works best for
learners. Rigorous research that leverages data generated by learning technologies can
be used effectively in tandem with powerful new methods for interpreting that data.
These efforts can shed new light on which methods of instruction are most effective and
what adjustments can most benefit different types of students.

 Providing Teachers Powerful Tools. Many teachers struggle to personalize instruction
to a classroom of 20-30 students. A handheld device that provides teachers continuous
access to analysis of student performance, engagement and interest information; makes
real-time recommendations about topics that need re-teaching; and connects with
resources from the vast universe of available online resources would enable teachers to
focus their attention on student interactions.

 Leveraging Collaboration. Collaborative information technologies have the power to
reshape education. Online communities have already demonstrated the ability to sustain
exponential performance improvement,11 but related efforts are nascent in education.
Players of the online game World of Warcraft have built communities, tools, and
relationships that allow them to learn from each other and constantly improve their in-
game performance. Working together, teams of strangers separated physically can
accomplish highly complex virtual tasks that no individual could achieve alone –
technology can bring that capability to education.

 Targeting Job Training. At a time when America needs workers with skills for the jobs
of the future, affordable and effective job training is crucial. Educational technologies
may allow us to provide unemployed workers with targeted training in their particular
areas of need, rapidly accelerating the pace of training and substantially decreasing the
cost as students focus their time, money, and effort on the knowledge and skills they
need most.

11 Douglas Thomas and Jagan Nemani (2009). ―The collaboration curve: Exponential performance
improvement in World of Warcraft.‖ Deloitte Center for the Edge. Available at
http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-
UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/us_tmt_WoW_082009.pdf.

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Educational technology has extraordinary potential that has yet to be unleashed. While work
such as Sugata Mitra’s Hole in the Wall project – installing computer stations in public areas in
disadvantaged communities – demonstrates that young children can learn complex topics with
little support beyond technology, the tools are likely to be much more powerful in the hands of
effective and excited teachers.
With accelerating progress and key trends – including nearly ubiquitous mobile devices,
investment in national broadband, more useful data, and deepening understanding of cognitive
science – the time is ripe for targeted investments to improve our use of technology in
education.

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